She holds a master's degree in journalism from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree from The Evergreen State College. From 1984 through 1991, she was a metro reporter with the
Los Angeles Times, where she focused on urban affairs, poverty, affordable housing, the environment and government. During 1991 and 1992, she lived in Prague and wrote about Czechoslovakia's transition to democracy for "Editor & Publisher" and others. After returning to Los Angeles in 1992, she was tapped by now-defunct
Buzz magazine to write its Power Brokers column focusing on Southern California's most influential elected and business leaders and institutions. From 1996 through 2003, she authored a weekly commentary column on
Los Angeles,
Southern California, and
Sacramento politics for the now-defunct
alternative newspaper New Times LA. According to Stewart, "That 'acerbic, iconoclastic' column propelled her into the public conscious and made her a 'must-read for many in town', particularly the LA power elite." According to Stewart, "from 2003 to late 2006, she wrote a syndicated column on California politics that ran in the
San Francisco Chronicle,
Los Angeles Daily News,
Orange County Register,
Long Beach Press-Telegram and several other newspapers, reaching an audience of 1 million readers." She joined
LA Weekly in 2006 as its news editor and was promoted to the managing editor's job in 2012. She is a longtime, occasional op-ed contributor to
The New York Times and
The Wall Street Journal. Between 1999 and 2013, she served for several years on the Los Angeles Press Club Board of Directors and became president of the board, which oversees a non-profit enterprise dedicated to bringing journalists together to improve the industry and reach out to non-journalists. In 2016–17, she was campaign director for the Coalition to Preserve Los Angeles in its attempt to get the anti-development
Measure S passed. ==Awards and honors==